accessing second HD

Hi,



My hard drive had an 'Unmountable Boot Volume' crash, so Dell sent someone out to replace it. The tech told me that I may be able to recover some data off of the crashed drive by hooking it up and booting off of the new one.



I hooked it up, and it shows up in 'My Computer' as local disk F. But when I try to access it, I get a window that says the drive needs to be formatted. If I click yes, will it automatically erase everything on that drive?



How do I access any files that are still on it?



I'm running Windows XP.



Any help will be greatly appreciated, as I have to send this bad HD back to Dell soon.



Thanks!

Ruby

Sounds like you could repair the Windows install on it and maybe be good to go.



Actually, here's a link to a site that has a potential fix for that error:



http://www.techtips4u.com/kb/sw/SW00014.htm



I'm suprised Dell just swapped the drive instead of having you reinstall Windows...that was nice of them.

Thanks for the link! I wish they would have told me I could do this, as I would have liked to be able to keep that drive with all my info on it.



Now my question is, Can I still do this with the new drive hooked up as the F drive?



Sorry to be a pain, but I am a computer dummy.

Ruby

I would guess you probably can. If your boot.ini file was really corrupt, then your error would make sense, but when it was in as a 2nd drive, I don't see why Windows didn't recognize it as another NTFS or FAT drive....unless maybe the new drive is FAT and the old was NTFS. I don't think FAT drives can see NTFS formatted drives, but I can't remember for sure.



If you cannot, hopefully you have a CD/DVD burner you can use to burn your info to disc, then swap back in the new drive and just copy it over that way?



edit: additions + spelling

<<but when it was in as a 2nd drive, I don't see why Windows didn't recognize it as another NTFS or FAT drive....>>



My computer says (the old drive) is there, and that it's working. But when I try to access it, (either through My Computer or through a program to view a file) it says it needs to be formatted. Both new and old drives are exactly the same.....they sent it out with the same configurations that I had originally ordered.



So since the computer now boots off of the new drive, how can I run the fix on the old one?



If you get tired of me asking dumb questions, let me know. lol

Thanks!

Ruby